After the battle was won and its rewards announced, Sao felt weightless. He was invigorated, even challenged, but watching a round of competitive eaters always wiped out his appetite for a bit.

Rai too had been moved - in the opposite direction.

They settling into the chaos of the dining area, Sao with his unfinished bottle of water and Rai with a tray of prawns in garlic butter, and beside that, a whole blooming onion. Despite the mugginess that permeated the food hall, Sao caught the onion’s greasy tang full force. Rai also had coffee, chainstore brand, and was attending to it first.

“Do you want any?” Rai asked.

Sao shook his head.

Gloves removed in preparation for his snack - and so he could key some searches into his phone - Rai’s hands glowed their natural neon blue. “So I read online that Cadoc has never been spotted vomiting at any competition he’s attended. No wonder Zip Cobalt didn’t bother with the 20 second grace period. No chance of Cadoc letting his hard work go. Actually, I’d say Basil looked the most likely to ‘reverse’, was that what you called it? Anyway, if Cadoc had barfed it all up, the second highest score at the weigh-in would have won.”

A child, somewhere in the depths of the dining crowd, screamed. Rai ignored it and demolished his coffee.

“Nero was runner-up. He looked, I don’t know, inebriated? Zoned out. I wonder if he would have performed better if he wasn’t, but then, I didn’t see Cadoc work his magic. Cadoc was the favorite to win from the start. Although it seemed pretty close to me. I would have been upset to almost choke myself several times over, only to come second.” Rai picked up a prawn and scraped the meat out with surgical precision. “But those guys were all so calm about it. That’s professionalism.”

Sao was mesmerized. Rai’s essence glowed, beyond the light of his hands, with newfound enlightenment. A plate smashed at a nearby table, a very vocal argument ensued, but Rai did not gripe and glare, or even toss in a quick scowl.

“You enjoyed the show, I gather,” Sao said.

Rai kicked back to look at the skylights. “The semis were fine. I’m still not going to go back and watch the ugly prelim Trae showed me a couple months back. But, yeah, this… wasn’t the parade of indignity I was expecting. I’ll just say that.” Rai lowered back onto all four chair legs and shelled another prawn. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”

“No thanks. Think I had too many sweets earlier. And that pizza.”

“Get some water.” Rai started a stack of red shells. “One thing that bothered me, though. The hype for ‘classical training.’ I don’t know what it means, but the classic and the veteran were way behind Nero and Cadoc at every phase.”

“It’s true, older eaters using the old methods have been on the decline lately. I wouldn’t guess there’s anything fundamentally different about the new and old training habits, but something of a rivalry’s been forged. The younger generation try to maintain their privacy between events, while the older generation has become known for more public displays of training, and the reports came to refer to those methods as ‘classic’.”

“In place of ‘outdated’.”

Sao sighed. “Well, I wouldn’t want to use that word either.”

“The veterans were still pretty impressive, I’m not saying I could do better. But you gotta feel a little bad for them, they just couldn’t compare to the other two. Kep’s bio said he’d faced Nero and Cadoc before, at separate occasions. He probably knew what was coming.”

“Maybe. I see you’ve already analyzed their match history.”

A smug smile crossed Rai’s face. “Working for HQ has prepared me for absorbing pages and pages of seemingly boring logs.”

Bridging his fingers under his chin, Sao grinned. “Then you may or may not have known, Kep passed his qualifier essentially by default. The frontrunner had a reversal just before the clock, one he couldn’t recover from.”

Rai studied these words and groaned. “I thought his face looked familiar. Kep’s the guy from the prelim video I saw.”

“He has a bit of a reputation. Skill and appetite are a given, but an odd proportion of his matches end with... upsets.”

Rai’s eyes had adopted their hard detective’s focus. He directed this at the final buttered prawn. “The announcer called him a heel. Do you watch any wrestling?” Sao had never even considered it. “In the simplest terms, if there’s a story to the sport, the heel plays the bad guy. Sometimes they spit insults and sometimes they cheat; they’re there to get booed, and often to lose. The character’s what they get paid for. I just thought it was funny for the tradition to extend to competitive eating. For one, they don’t get to do much talking. And two mil...”

“Maybe he doesn’t like the idea of going down South for the finals. Too much heat and dust.”

“Maybe.” Rai uncapped a tiny bucket of off-white paste. “I bet Trae thought I’d find him funny. Trae’s like that. Guess I should give that video another shot. One day.”

The blooming onion in all its battered and fried glory was next in Rai’s sights. It was something completely out of the ordinary, when it came to Rai’s palette as Sao knew it; unclean and lumpy, made of crackling brown chunks. Sure enough, Rai was perplexed by the shape of it, prodding it for weak points with a neon blue finger.

Sao cocked his head. “A nicely done onion for a pop-up stall.”

“I got it because it looked interesting.” Rai took a tentative crunch. “Well, I know someone who will finish it if I don’t.”

“That reminds, me - where is Trae? Did he go for a smoke again?”

“He said he was going to the bathroom.”

“Right, right, I forgot. He’s been off a while.” Sao looked over to the rows of white canopies. “Distracted by the marketplace, maybe.”

“Don’t know how much he can get without his wallet.” A worn leather pouch was lying on the table in lieu of their missing friend. Rai gnashed up a piece of onion. “Don’t tell me he forgot his phone, too.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Sao said. “One can’t help being distracted by freebies, but he doesn’t seem like the sort to start a fight.”

“Or get crushed by falling canopies.”

Sao laughed. “Go easy on him. He hasn’t had a chance to wander until now.”

“I know, I know, let him have his day. He’s the one who wanted to come, I was just dragged along to babysit him.” Crunching another petal, Rai’s expression was less severe than his words. “Probably better that he’s getting freebies, and isn’t off spending his money unsupervised.”

“Naturally. He could just be stuck in a long bathroom line.”

Rai grimaced at the thought and pushed it away. “Trae never carries much cash. He’ll probably end up eating whatever he gets on the way home. I’ll pick him up a few things later so he isn’t disappointed, doesn’t think I’m pissed at him or anything.” Rai heaved a loud sigh. “But what a day. Glad I found a few decent distractions.”

“Same here.”

Crack, went the onion. “Who knew eating made for such an entertaining sport?”

Sao resisted the urge to laugh.

The spirited noontime sun streamed through the glass walls of conservatory, where the dining area was set. Outside, flowering planters waved in the gentlest of breezes. The botanical gardens were blooming in shy pinks and yellows. The noise of his fellow diners soon faded to the backdrop, a soft monotone blur. Rai would be occupied for a while with that onion, and hell, it was the weekend. Sao felt a nap was in quick order.

A skill he was half proud and half ashamed of: Sao could fall asleep practically the moment he set himself to task (it also came quickly when he was bored, stressed, or had just came out of the shower). Rest was like opening a trapdoor; set one elbow down, palm up, and his head dropped right onto them, through to the land of dreams.

“What the hell?”

The shout came from Rai, who had leapt up, staring overhead. Sao fumbled, rubbed his eyes and apologized. But it wasn’t Sao that had Rai on his feed.

The sun still beamed from the heavens, through the rooftop skylights; not a speck of white or grey in the sky. But out the side window, beyond the planters, a thick, brewing cloud the color of coal was crawling its way across the parking lot.

Some of the diners began to notice, pointing and murmuring. Rai yanked his gloves on and kicked his chair back, shoving his way out of the revelers. Panic aside, Sao couldn’t hold back a tiny smile. The onion bloom had been eaten down to its core.

---

Roughly twenty minutes before Rai and Sao made their hasty departure, Trae was wandering the popup marketplace like a child in a dream, adorned with several doting faerie godmothers.

“You were in the front row? God, I’m so jealous.”

Trae chewed a length of spiced jerky and recounted as much as he could for the familiar gathering of ladies in blazers and pencil skirts.

His trip to the bathroom had come and gone without incident, despite it being quite a walk to the other end of the main hall, and quite a wait in addition to that. He circled along the outside of the market on the way over, so all he saw were ventilation fans and backs of refrigerators, but the colorful charms and swirl of smells wouldn’t let him pass back to the dining area without a quick look.

Sugar and salt and honeyed treats danced by, heavenly waves of sweet and savory, but the fact that he’d left his wallet at the table kept him moving - until the jerky stand. The table holding five metal racks, covered in ribbons of glazed meat, took the chance of Trae’s strolling by to buckle its legs and drop its finery to the ground. It would have happened too, if Trae hadn’t been gazing longingly at the table the moment it began, and threw out both arms to catch the impending disaster. It wasn’t the most elegant rescue, with some juggling and the stall canopy coming down in the process, but the jerky was saved.

“Close call,” wheezed the shopkeeper. “Thank god you were here.”

Trae had to hold the tabletop, racks and goods, until the shopkeeper got the canopy up again. They were in luck: the small party of suited women materialized just in time to help, pitching the poles into their sockets and pulling the banner tight like experts. They all walked away with a handful of samples, and plenty to catch up on.

“I was standing on Nero’s side, but I saw them all,” Trae said of his front-row experience. “It was a really close match. Even Basil did okay, he wasn’t very far behind in the end.”

“He didn’t look so great,” the tallest woman said. “Didn’t stand a chance. I guess he had to turn up, though, and he got his participant’s pay.”

“He was trying really hard,” Trae mused. “Maybe he didn’t feel well today.”

“Well, he did hold back on hurling. Just about everyone came close to that. Even Cadoc looked a little on-edge today, you saw, halfway through? The beast was feeling some pressure. It’s his first international tournament, poor thing.”

“The curse of Kep, isn’t that right?” chirped the shortest woman, who came up to Trae’s elbow. 

“Whatever Kep’s problem is, I’m sure Cadoc won’t be poor for much longer. He’s going to kill it in the finals.”

The five women laughed. Trae concentrated on funneling strips of sweet chili jerky under his cotton mask.

“Man, what I’d do with two mil,” sighed the woman with fancy nails. 

“Cadoc,” came a distant yell.

“What?” asked the short woman.

“Where?”

“It’s Cadoc. Over by the stage. Someone said his name.”

Six heads turned in unison, Trae’s mane catching several faces as it swept in a massive arc. 

“Aren’t all the contestants backstage?”

“Don’t know. Think he’s really there?” The short woman picked a few dark hairs out of her mouth.

“Not possible,” the tall woman declared, but the whole group - with a few followers who had caught their talk - didn’t hesitate to follow the sound of the call. In the foyer in front of the empty stage, near the end of the ticket-taker rows and the exit, a rumble was brewing. Four men in shirts emblazoned with Nero’s name, face, stats and emblems were boxing in two smaller figures in hooded sweatshirts, either of whom could have been Cadoc - or anyone else with an unremarkable build.

“Always thought something was fishy about you,” rambled one of Nero’s fanclub. “How this normie comes out of nowhere, like magical fairy, just in time to take first, taking it from the real-”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” one of the hooded figures whined. They were hunched under the weight of their companion, who was slumped over their shoulder and groaned tearfully with the impact.

“Don’t you lie,” slurred another distressed fanclub member. “Taking it from the real men. That’s what you did. Bet this damn twink can’t even handle a-” can’t even handle a-”

“Enough!” the tall woman barked. “Get a hold of yourself. You talk to your mother with that mouth?”

Three of the men backed down, but the tallest man, sensing it was up to him, stepped up to bat. “Mind your own damn business. This conversation is man-to-man.”

“Funny, I don’t see any men. And are you completely deaf? That’s a woman. What would Cadoc North be doing slouching around in the open, with idiots like you running around?” She waved the hooded pair on their way.

“Bitch,” her tall counterpart started, raising a finger and giving the woman a hard prod.

The shortest of the women at Trae’s side pitched forward and shoved the pointing man hard enough that - in combination with his tipsiness - he stumbled backward, windmilling, until his back hit the stage. Another one of the men came and lifted her off the ground by her armpits, and the woman with fancy nails approached and slapped him. The short woman landed like a cat and began kicking the shins of the man who had come to restrain her. The whole display got a resounding buzz from the audience.

Trae sadly inhaled the last of his jerky and peered after the hooded figures who were stumbling toward the exit. The supported one seemed heavily drunk or extremely ill, shiny red sneakers unable to keep a grip on the floor, toes catching the tile and jerking back and forth as their owner was guided toward the sunlit exit. He was happy to note that they were headed home. Those nice shoes were going to be ruined if they were dragged around anymore.

He wished he had more jerky.

The more poised of the hooded figures made quick progress, and soon pulled out the door. But, at the metal frame of the doorway, their poor companion’s head tipped back, clipped the doorframe, and the hood dropped. Trae’s eyes widened.

Light brown hair. A yellowish face. White eyeballs rolled back, and mouth gaping open like a dead fish. And from the lower lip, there were streams and streams of black, brown and red. This was not an expression Trae recognized, but the face - yes - he’d been watching that face for months - footage taken from stadium back rows, with shaky phones, turned into grainy uploads - he knew that face, there was no mistake.

“Cadoc?” he gasped.

This time, more than six heads were turned. The brawl between Nero’s fans and the women in officewear ceased in an instant.

“Cadoc are you - I think he’s hurt! Wait!” Trae started after them, but the hoods were back up and the figures had darted - or rather, one figure had darted while pulling the other - into the searing afternoon sun.

A pause. Then the cries of alarm.

“He was knocked out!”

“He was bleeding!”

“He was dead!”

The watchers were thrilled and confused, their ruckus causing more and more passersby to gather, joining the storm of panic. The walkway was quickly becoming blocked, anyone who intended to help was getting caught in the crossroads; then there was the tangle left over from the brawl that some assumed to be the ongoing attraction. But when a monstrous mop of hair with a masked face came blundering through, people stepped aside.

Only one of the glass doors was designated as an exit. Trae made it out of the hall first, followed by two women and one member of the Nero fanclub, blinking sunspots from their eyes.

“Where did he go? Did anyone see anything? You - did you see anything?”

“They can’t be far.”

“Who was that? A kidnapper? Who’d want to kidnap Cadoc? Did he look alright?” The speaker was nearly in tears. “They said he was hurt?”

“I’m sure he’s okay. He was fine.”

A hiss and a rumble indicated the train had left the nearby station, and this unleashed a tornado of ideas. Stop the trains. Check the buses. Close all the gates and check all the cameras. No. It was too late. Alert the city. The mayor. Two million on the line!

The train was gone. But the rumble of an engine was still on the wind. Far enough to see at a squint, a car had circled out to the edge of the complex and was headed for the exit of the parking lot. 

A scream, a call for cars. Who has one? We need to give chase, right now! How far did you park? Anyone?

Trae was sweating. His throat was backing up, the pressure crawling upward, like some creature growing in his lungs. He had never been quick on his feet, but Trae was never helpless. Though he had learned to hold back with the help of plastic masks and a few boring exercises, if the extra arm was not cut off so to speak, it would still always be at his disposal. Two hundred years of survival weren’t that easily forgotten.

Nobody else was going to reach that far. What would he be if he didn’t try?

Trae yanked down his mask, inhaled deeply, and before he could consider if it were a bad idea or not, exhaled all the air in his lungs, and out with it flowed a deep black cloud of Life Fountain aura. The people who had gathered near him choked with surprise, and fell back.

Propelled by forces beyond breath, the shadow reared up and dropped like an avalanche, spilling out smoky tendrils that wound together and skated off like a massive serpent in the direction of the vehicle. The cloud built as it extended over the lot, drifting over and through a row of planters, flooding the lane of flagposts, and bulging like a great gaseous whale as it hit the parking lot. The escaping vehicle paid no heed to the incoming mass of fog. It did not slow in the slightest.

There were chants telling him to catch it, stop it, crash it, and the voices crying what’s that, what are you, what. When Trae considered all their questions, it seemed a bit too demanding of him. He was irritated, he was busy, what did they want?

All that could be pushed back. White noise. It was Cadoc’s limp neck and colorless eyes that were engraved in his mind. The last thing he saw, that hanging mouth open in a wordless cry. I don’t need to blow it up or knock it over, Trae told himself, nobody will be mad and nobody will get hurt. In the hospital, I do this all the time. No so fast, but… all I need is one touch. One touch of aura and Cadoc would be saved. Just one, just a bit.

Cloud and car were set to collide.

But for two hundred years, Trae had never tried - or needed - to outmatch the speed of a car. Right when he thought they were about to hit, the driver gunned the engine and shot free of the hedges around the exit, its fender grazing only the fringe of the impending black cloud. Through the aural connection, small shivers traveling through the blackened air, Trae felt the polished sieve of a car grille, and the grind of heavy tires. The car had a low frame, with sharp edges, and two exhaust pipes. One of those fast, flat cars, the kind Rai was always pointing at in magazines. Zero to a hundred in two seconds flat, or something catchy like that. Moving at ‘a hundred’ was beyond Trae’s understanding. But he knew couldn’t catch the thing, not from here, not like this.

Not without unnecessary pains, anyhow. 

With a look around him, then at the exit, and breathing a dark sigh, Trae released his smoke. The stream loosened, bulged and burst, dissolving into the air. The ground in front of him appeared scorched, coated with black flakes. The planters he’d cut through - he didn’t want to look - were overflowing with blackened life, piles of vines and newborn and newly dead flowers spilling onto the pavement.

“They got away,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just needed one touch. But...” His shoulders sagged.

“Some of the others went after it in cars,” explained a suddenly sober member of the Nero fanclub. “You tried. What was that gas, anyway? Fire magic?”

Trae shook his head.

“They’ll get him,” the fanclub member said. “But was that really Cadoc? Was he taken? I don’t like the guy but man, bad news. Really bad news...”

“Somebody call security,” said a distressed man in a white apron. “I heard there were police patrolling the expo.” Trae wanted to simply shake his head at that, too. But there was no use denying it, because the interrogator had arrived for him right then, clawing his way through the doorway and bellowing, “Trae, are you out of your goddamn mind?”